


Art Academy: Add-On Lesson: Vanitas

by flamewarflipsides



Category: Art Academy (Games), Doctor Who
Genre: Bodégon, Chameleon Arch, Crossover, Fob watch, Gen, Lesson, Monologue, Other, Second Person, Spoilers, Time Lord, art academy, vanitas - Freeform, zubaran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:57:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamewarflipsides/pseuds/flamewarflipsides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Art Academy's Vince presents you, his student, with a new lesson on a different kind of still life: vanitas. While pondering teaching you a lesson on vanitas using his favorite watch, Vince's ramblings take him into the darkest parts of his past. Can you help him through it? </p><p>This story was written to evoke an Art Academy lesson from the title <i>Art Academy: Lessons for Everyone.</i> Due to technical limitations, it may not be possible to embed the images to which he refers in the story. Links to pages that contain those images will be furnished in notes at the end.</p><p>Many thanks to my brothers, my sister, Aevee, and Werekitty for the help. And LIteraryFanFiction @dA for the inspiration. The story has to contain the word "create."</p><p>***</p>
            </blockquote>





	Art Academy: Add-On Lesson: Vanitas

Hello! This is a bit embarrassing: I forgot you were coming today. I had just sat down to sketch one of my favourite possessions: my watch. I suppose this gives us an excellent opportunity to explore more advanced still life paintings!

You may have come to think of still life as fruits and flowers; until this point, all of the lessons we’ve done together have included some piece of the natural world. However, the term also includes pictures of man-made items alone, items like this timepiece. 

Consider Francisco de Zurbarán’s “Bodegón.” There are no pieces of nature here, not even food: just manmade artifacts. Look at the rich detail on the patterns of the pottery, and the care taken to show the shadows of each. Artists in Spain in that period often applied this kind of detail to mundane, seemingly unattractive objects. This austerity is called “vanitas.” Works that used elements of vanitas were very cynical, meant to show the hollow qualities of the physical world and make the viewer long for what lies beyond it. 

I must admit I’m not normally much for vanitas. I enjoy celebrating life and its beauty, creating works of art that affirm how much even the simplest of lives is worth living. But sometimes, sometimes in my weaker moments, I think about how it all ends. Sometimes, I think about the artificial world we’ve built up around ourselves, and how devoid of life it can seem. Sometimes, I feel like we put the cart before the horse.  
And it’s in these moods that I try to create vanitas, to draw and paint still life that shows how empty things are, instead of how full. Usually, I end up drawing this watch. It was a present from my first wife, and she designed and built it herself. I haven’t had the heart to open it and check the time since her passing. Sometimes I imagine the watch has stopped. Looking at it reminds me of the times we had, the adventures, the people we’ve left behind. Nothing can last forever, except maybe art. 

I suppose I should open it, sometime, shouldn’t I? The watch is probably still ticking, a symbol of my wife’s everlasting love. I’d like to see my face when I open it… Hm, maybe you should take a photograph to mark the occasion, then paint it for your lesson. You could use the camera on your 3DS, or, if you’d like something with a bit more character, I have an antique camera out in the shed behind my house. You’ve never seen the shed? You can’t really miss it; it’s dark blue and looks uncomfortably like a police box…

**Author's Note:**

> Links to referenced images: 
> 
> [ A TARDIS wiki article containing a picture of the watch.](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Fob_watch) It's the silver one.  
> [Wikipedia article on Zurbaran.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zurbaran)  
> [Wikipedia article on Bodegon.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodegon) The referenced picture is the first one on the page.  
> [Wikipedia Article containing a picture of the shed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TARDIS).


End file.
